This thesis is concerned basically with the philosophical and aesthetic implications of the "yes or no" dialectic in Samuel Beckett's novels. While some aspects of this problem have been noted by critics (especially Richard Coe and Hugh Kenner), their full significance has not been elaborated. This thesis is especially indebted to Hugh Kenner’s provocative discussion of "art in a closed field" in Flaubert, Joyce and Beckett: The Stoic Comedians. But a new line of exploration is opened up by developing the notion of "art in a closed field" in conjunction with Kierkegaard's philosophy of either/or and Beckett's "yes or no." Such an approach allows for an awareness of the "existential " nature of Beckett's writings and helps emphasize the urgency of the emotional appeal of Beckett's characters as they make their "choices." A key question the thesis attempts continually to answer is: what are the nature and consequences of this "choice" made within the closed field of art and life? In Murphy the “yes or no" theme is dealt with in terms of the dualisms of Cartesianism and schizophrenia. (Note: Since the completion of my thesis, G.C. Barnard's Samuel Beckett: A New Approach which deals extensively with schizophrenia has appeared. He fails, however, to relate the psychological with the philosophical dimensions of Beckett's art and thought.). My own attempt to come to terms with Beckett is eclectic - but all discussions centre around the "yes or no" conundrum. A significant contribution to the study of Beckett's thought is, I believe, made in the discussion of Watt by indicating the relevancy of Kant and Hume to Beckett's philosophy of form - his aesthetics of the absurd. Beckett's indebtedness to Enlightenment thought, especially Descartes, has been recognized since Kenner's pioneer work. But the extended discussion of this debt in terms of Kant and Hume shows the complexity of this heritage as it influences Beckett's art. Tracing still further this intellectual tradition in the trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, it is possible to discern Beckett's Kierkegaardian-like parody of Hegelian rationalism and aesthetics. The philosophical underpining of Beckett's progressive treatment of the "yes or no" dialectic is thus made clearer. The discussion of How It Is in terms of the pornographic form illustrates how Beckett's relentless pursuit of his artistic premises' leads him to a unique philosophical treatment of what is usually regarded as a sub-literary genre. The conclusion, "No's Knife," deals briefly with some of the social and cultural implications of Beckett's art. This area of Beckett criticism is most weak and is often marred by an obvious failure to study in depth Beckett's work. It is hoped that this thesis helps in part to redress this failure in Beckett criticism. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This essay is principally concerned with the nature and possibilities of action in Samuel Beckett1s four major stage plays: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, and Happy Bays. The problem arises from the fact that each of these plays is organically inconclusive, indicating that the action is not causally structured in the Aristotelean sense. Action is therefore examined in terms of the characters' separate activities: how they are initiated and terminated, their internal order, and their relation to each play as a whole. The three basic sources employed for criteria are Beckett's critical essay, Proust; his early novels, Murphy and Watt; and Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens. Proust provides a clear indication of Beckett's theories on time, habit, and friendship; Murphy and Watt are seen as character prototypes; and Homo Ludens is useful in that it supplies a working definition of play. After a detailed examination of each play in the above terms, the general conclusion reached is that in all cases Beckett has portrayed a state of being as opposed to a process of becoming. In other words, the characters feel and act as though they are caught in an endless present: in their situations they feel cut off from their past, and at the same time they cannot plan and project their activities toward a known goal, for the future is completely uncertain. Consequently, aside from those moments when the characters have no effective control over their actions, and aside from those actions governed by some form of necessity, everything they do during the course of the plays is done simply to fill the enormous void of time. Considered separately, each activity or strategy of waiting is seen to conform to the characteristics of play as defined by Huizinga, and furthermore, each activity is seen as a habitual response to reality. The similarities between one activity and another are conditioned by two fundamental factors: a subject-object dichotomy, or the relation between the individual, the world, and other people; and death, the one event in human life which is certain, but not fixed. The differences between the various activities, on the other hand, are conditioned primarily by the ages of the characters: the older a character is the more he loses contact with the world and other people, and this affects the scope of his activities. It is finally concluded that Beckett has portrayed the fundamental isolation of western man—the tragicomedy of individualism. Cut off from others and time, man's habitual response to life and the external world has been to devise strategies of waiting for the time when it will all end. / Arts, Faculty of / Theatre and Film, Department of / Graduate

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 309-330) Resists the notion of a subversive Beckett appropriated by the cultural mainstream, by tracing the discursive limits of avante-garde writing, and by exploring how Beckett paradoxically reinforced the traditional author-function even as he appeared to challenge it.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Litt.--Philadelphie--University of Pennsylvania, 1970. / Bibliogr. p. 92-97. Index.

Over the course of his life Beckett's work moves through a process of reduction toward increasing simplicity and concentration of means. 1 trace this reduction in Beckett's later works for the stage and compare it with the dialectics of negative theology, both Buddhist and Orthodox Christian, paying particular attention to structures of visuality and iconicity (both visual and not) in Beckett's work. The visual enjoyed a status of peculiar ontological primacy for Beckett. In it he saw exemplified both the dualisms he worked to overcome throughout his career and the saving grace that will overcome them: a "breathless immediacy" (Beckett's words) that will skip the mediation of language and the linearity of discourse and present exquisitely balanced, essentially still, nondual images. Beckett's metaphorical, that is, vertically structured stage images are subtended by metonymic texts that run through a strategic process of self-emptying in a kind of kenosis of discourse. The aporetic figures thus produced form similarly iconic structures on the textual level as can be found on the visual level. In Beckett's horizontal world a displaced sacramentalism and a phenomenologically motivated process of enquiry into the nature of things combine to create an empty space, a gray area through which the divine can enter if the audience is inclined to make such an act of faith. Beckett creates an art of Erfahrung that leads to a confrontation with an Other beyond the limits of a reductive concept of instrumental reason.

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This thesis examines Beckett's trilogy as a work of metafiction, approaching each novel through its primary metafictional device, the self-conscious narrator. Since the narrators are aware of their roles as story-tellers, the examination is carried out in light of Beckett's pronouncements on the nature of art and the artist. Not only are the narrators found to meet Beckett's criteria for artists and artistic development, but Beckett's aesthetic is seen virtually to require self-consciousness. In their situations, their relationship to the audience (both reader and narratee) and the nature of their tales, the self-conscious narrators follow the artistic trajectory Beckett maps out in his critical writings. As Beckett's aesthetic is fulfilled, the narrators' increasing self-consciousness intensifies the metafictional aspects of the trilogy. The trilogy is thus a demonstration of Beckett's self-conscious aesthetic--a descent into reflexivity on the part of the narrators, and through the narrators, on the part of trilogy as a whole.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 309-330) / vii, 330 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Resists the notion of a subversive Beckett appropriated by the cultural mainstream, by tracing the discursive limits of avante-garde writing, and by exploring how Beckett paradoxically reinforced the traditional author-function even as he appeared to challenge it. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 2001

Traditional criticism of Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable has sought to establish a universal "truth" or unified consciousness behind the dispersive nature of the text, and consequently readings of the novel have been both reductive and inadequate. Because Beckett's text distorts and displaces traditional narrative tools, and the Western metaphysical tradition from which they arise, criticism concerned with the upheaval of tradition is more appropriate for reading The Unnamable. The thesis takes three different textual positions in the text--the question of beginnings and endings in the text, the problematic of the subject (the proliferation of the "I" versus a concept of the unified consciousness), and the notion of propriety in the concept of the proper name--and engages in textual play with the text. By using certain modified methods of what we might provisionally call "deconstruction," the readings open the metaphors in the text, and examine the nature of the distortion of tradition that Beckett achieves? the readings are productive rather than reductive. The thesis is more concerned with enacting the upheaval of The Unnamable, and is less concerned with describing the textual ruptures or arriving at any fixed meanings or conclusions, for that would be to remain strictly within the tradition that Beckett and the decontructors attempt to dislodge. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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